Twists And Turns
by Alchemine
Summary: When the King of the Goblins comes to Hogwarts asking for help, a random group of students and professors must go on a mission into a strange land. (HPLabyrinth crossover; discontinued.)
1. The Goblin King

**Quick note on my pennames**: This story was originally posted under my other name, Aconite. I decided to consolidate because it was getting too confusing to have two accounts. (For one thing, I kept forgetting which name I'd used to review other people's stories and accidentally reviewing twice under different accounts.) It has not been updated recently, but soon will be.

**Quick note on the story**: It's a crossover between "Harry Potter" and the movie "Labyrinth." If you've seen the movie, you may notice a few slight differences between the character of Jareth depicted there and the one here. Mine is a little nastier and a little less omnipotent, but otherwise he's the same. And yes, he does look like David Bowie. =)

**Disclaimer**: The characters and places depicted in this story belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever owns the rights to "Labyrinth."

**Spoilers**: All four books

**Chapter 1**: The Goblin King

No matter how much Mr. Filch shouted and the prefects scolded, passing periods at Hogwarts were always raucous. You couldn't go two steps without having your toes trodden on or being forced to dodge someone's covert hex. Fortunately, the longer you were a student, the better you got at ducking and weaving your way through the chaos and making it to class both unscathed and on time.

As fifth years, Harry and Ron had honed their skill to perfection. On this rainy March morning alone, they had already slipped past eight trouble spots before they reached the gallery that overlooked Hogwarts' main entrance.

"Hey, look at that," said Ron, pointing down the grand staircase at Professors Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall, who were standing shoulder to shoulder in the foyer, watching the approach of a small, familiar figure: Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic.

"What do you suppose Fudge is doing here?" Ron asked.

"Don't know," Harry said. "Let's go a little closer and find out."

Everyone else passing by seemed to have the same idea – since Voldemort's return, the Minister of Magic coming to Hogwarts was bigger news than ever – and by the time Harry and Ron got down to the foyer, they were part of a good-size crowd that included several professors and students from all four houses.

They elbowed their way to the front, where they discovered that Fudge had brought an owl with him, a fine specimen of the barn species. It had been riding on his wrist, falcon-style, but now took off and soared up to the very top of the vaulted ceiling. Then it swooped low and suddenly became a tall, fair-haired man in a black cloak adorned with feather epaulets. He had sharp features and a thin mouth every bit as cruel-looking as the beak of the bird he had been a moment before.

"He's an Animagus!" whispered Ron, impressed.

The owl-man cast a cool, amused glance around him, but said nothing. He didn't have to. Fudge was practically falling over himself in his rush to do the talking for his companion.

"Albus, this is Jareth, king of the goblins. You must have heard his name before –"

"We've met, Cornelius," Dumbledore interrupted. His expression was carefully neutral, but Harry got the idea that Dumbledore and Jareth were not friends.

_King of the goblins?_ he wondered. _How can that be? Why would the goblins let themselves be ruled by a human? And what is he doing at Hogwarts?_

It seemed Dumbledore had read Harry's mind, because he now turned to the visitor and asked "Why are you here?"

"Ah, such sweet words of welcome, Albus," said the Goblin King, smiling suddenly and revealing a shocking array of snaggle teeth that didn't match the rest of his appearance in the least. They looked like teeth one might use to tear apart raw meat – or perhaps to kill the meat in the first place. "I've missed you dreadfully, you know. How long has it been? Thirty years? Forty? _So_ hard to keep in touch."

"I'll put you on my Christmas card list," said Dumbledore. "To the point, please, Jareth. What is it that you want?"

"I seem to have mislaid my castle," Jareth replied carelessly. With a languid movement, he leaned back against the nearest wall, crossed one high- heeled black boot over the other, and looked around as if comparing Hogwarts to his own castle, wherever it might be, and finding it substandard.

"You can't have this one," Dumbledore said. "We're using it."

"Oh, I don't want _your_ castle, Albus. It's not at all suitable. Too clean, for one thing. No, it's my castle I need, and I can't get to it. That's where you come in – or, I should say, some of your people."

A murmur of excited dismay rippled through the crowd at these last words, and Harry saw students and professors whispering to each other, asking "What can he mean?"

Dumbledore was looking uncharacteristically impatient. "I see you're no better at making yourself understood now than you were the last time we met," he said. "Out with it, or out with you."

"It's quite simple," said Jareth. "My castle is in the midst of a labyrinth. Beautiful place, really, with trick passages and dead ends and sudden sinkholes. Not unlike Hogwarts, when you think about it, eh? Anyway, I didn't build the labyrinth myself. It belonged to the wizard who ruled the goblins before me. He didn't bother to tell me its secrets before he tragically passed away – of course, it might have been a bit hard for him to talk with my hands around his throat. I've learned a great deal about it and gained more control than I ever thought to have, but unfortunately, the labyrinth sometimes has a mind of its own. It's decided to conceal the castle from me, and I can't find it."

Here Fudge cut in. "Jareth would like to send a search party to locate his castle for him. He feels that the labyrinth won't bother trying to hide it from strangers. He has asked specifically for assistance from Hogwarts, and, well, the Ministry has agreed."

"Why ever would the Ministry do that?" asked Professor McGonagall, speaking for the first time. She was staring at Fudge with a hostile expression – she clearly had not forgiven him for the incident with the dementors at the end of the previous year. "Especially with everything that has been happening of late? It's all we can do to continue teaching and keep the students safe, never mind going on mad errands that have nothing to do with us."

"Er –" Fudge said, and Jareth laughed delightedly.

"Blackmail," he answered on Fudge's behalf. "I am ruler of all the goblins – even the ones that live and work in your world. If I don't receive the help I've requested, I will call them all back to my domain, and you will no longer have access to their services."

"The Gringotts goblins keep our entire financial system running," Fudge said. "If they go, everything falls apart. They've set all the spells, they know all the passwords – we'd be ruined."

"Yes, wouldn't it be sad?" Jareth said, still snickering a bit. "Now, let me see. I'll need a couple of fully trained wizards –" He glanced around, and his gaze fell on Professor Snape.

"You look like a man after my own heart," the Goblin King said. He pointed a black-leather-gloved hand at Snape, who seemed a bit startled, but didn't flinch. "I'll take you. And _you_ --" here he turned on Professor McGonagall again – "you remind me of a girl I once knew. I don't suppose you're called Sarah, are you?"

"No. Minerva, Minerva McGonagall," she said.

"Hmmm," mused Jareth. "You _are_ a bit too old to be her. Do you have a daughter called Sarah? A niece? A cousin? A godchild? A youthful ward? A friend of the family?" McGonagall shook her head blankly after each increasingly bizarre suggestion. "No? There is a similarity, though. It must be the hair. But what a dreadful style." As he spoke, a series of tiny metallic _plink_ sounds rang clearly across the foyer, and McGonagall looked down in alarm to see her hairpins falling onto the stone floor. Jareth reached out and mussed her hair, rather in the manner of an adult fondly greeting a child, until it hung loose down her back.

"Leave it," he said sharply when she raised her hands to repair the damage. "If you're going to be helping me, you'll do it looking the way I want you to."

McGonagall gave him one of the fiercest glares Harry had ever seen her issue – which was saying a lot – but obeyed his instructions. At the same time, Snape moved around Dumbledore to stand beside her in a surprisingly protective manner. The two of them were almost of a height and made a formidable pair indeed. Harry was surprised Jareth didn't quail at the sight. But he was already turning back to Dumbledore.

"They'll do nicely," he said. "I'll need more, though. For a task like this, children are essential. They are more creative thinkers. They can see things adults can't."

"No," said Dumbledore. "You absolutely may not take any Hogwarts student with you."

"But I will," returned Jareth. "Won't I, Cornelius?"

Now everyone looked at Fudge, who appeared upset and resigned all at once.

"We haven't any choice, Albus," he said.

Jareth flashed his repulsive teeth at Dumbledore again. "I think four children will be enough. Two per adult." He turned in a slow circle, surveying the crowd. "You. You. You." Neville Longbottom, Hannah Abbott and Draco Malfoy all took hesitant steps forward. "And … you."

Harry gulped. The Goblin King was pointing squarely at him. A line from a book he'd read once – something about the fickle finger of fate – flashed through his head.

"No!" That was Professor McGonagall's voice. "Albus, I really don't think it's a good idea for him to take Potter, not considering the circumstances –"

"I quite agree, Minerva," Dumbledore said. "Could you be persuaded to choose another student to round out your quartet?" he asked Jareth. "Harry here is a bit of a special case."

"I think not," Jareth said. Fudge, unhelpful as usual, nodded in Jareth's support. Dumbledore shot a what-can-I-do glance at McGonagall, and she shrugged very slightly.

"Come, Potter, Longbottom," she said, beckoning to her two Gryffindors. They both walked over, and to their surprise, she put an arm around each of them and drew them close against the folds of her green robes. It was not at all like McGonagall to touch her students for any reason, and Harry was both embarrassed at being so near her and alarmed at the thought of how threatening the situation must be to make her do such a thing. He could see Neville felt the same.

"Malfoy and Miss Abbott, you're with me," said Snape curtly, and the other two students went and stood beside him. He didn't embrace them as McGonagall had done with hers (_That'll be the day the world ends_, Harry thought), but the look on his face clearly stated that Jareth had best not think of doing anything to them.

Jareth, for his part, appeared not to notice the attitudes of his chosen champions. If he did, he didn't care.

"Excellent," he said, clapping his gloved hands together with a sound that should have been muffled, but instead exploded like a gunshot. "Well, no need to keep you from your task any longer. But before you go, I have something for you." Six shimmering crystal globes appeared, bobbing up and down gently in the air beside him, and he flicked them one at a time, as if he were shooting marbles, toward Snape, McGonagall, Draco, Neville, Harry and Hannah. "You can use these to communicate with each other if you become separated – though I wouldn't suggest becoming separated, oh no!" He laughed at what apparently was a private joke. "When you reach the castle, stay there and wait. I'll be able to find you by tuning in on the globes. Then I'll come and reclaim my rightful property."

Snape tucked his globe into the pocket of his robe and glowered at Jareth.

"Any other brilliant words of advice?" he asked.

"Only this," said Jareth. "I may be the labyrinth's owner, but I am not necessarily its master. If you get lost, I cannot guarantee that you will ever be found. Of course, if you get lost and fail to locate my castle, I will be most displeased." He ran his tongue over his teeth, and Harry saw flecks of blood appear where their sharp points had touched. "You might not wish for me to find you, in that case."

"Lovely," said Professor McGonagall dryly. She still had tight hold of both her students. Her whole body was rigid with emotion – mostly indignation at being dragged away on this unexpected assignment, Harry thought, but with disgust and a touch of fear mixed in. "If you've nothing more to contribute, then let's be off. I haven't got all day."

"You've got as long as it takes," Jareth said. "The harder you work for me, the sooner you return and get back to your own insignificant business. So – go!"

With that, a pit opened beneath their feet, and the six of them fell into darkness.


	2. Muddled Magic

**Disclaimer**: All characters and places belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever owns the rights to "Labyrinth."

**Spoilers**: All four books

**Chapter 2**: Muddled Magic

Everyone screamed as they fell, even Snape. It was impossible not to. The fall was long and sickening, and was made even worse by the fact that they couldn't see where they were going. It ended when they slammed into some dusty brown shrubbery and lay still, groaning.

Harry was the first to rouse. He pushed Neville and Professor McGonagall off – they'd all hung onto each other most of the way down, and consequently had landed in a tangled heap – and struggled upright. A few feet away, Snape was rising from his own stopping place, looking stunned and pained. He surveyed the area with a scowl.

Little as he wanted to share Snape's opinion on anything, Harry had to agree with his assessment of their surroundings. They were at the top of a hill, overlooking a bleak sepia-tone landscape dotted with dead trees, boulders and more of the stunted vegetation they'd landed in. Far below sprawled a massive walled enclosure – the labyrinth of which the Goblin King had spoken.

_We're going to be in there forever, _he thought, staring at the endlessly twisting passages it contained. 

"Not very inviting, is it?" McGonagall commented as she crawled out of the bushes behind Harry. She'd split her lower lip in their fall. Blood was trickling from it onto her chin in a way that reminded him unpleasantly of old vampire movies he'd seen on the Dursleys' television.

"Professor, your mouth …" he said, and she touched it curiously and frowned at the crimson smear that came away on her fingers.

"Just what I needed. Severus, will you help me with this? I can't fix it if I can't see it." Snape came over and held her still with a hand on the back of her head while he touched the tip of his wand gently to the injury. After a minute, he took the wand away.

"It's not working," he said. "You, Potter, get over here and try."

They'd learned basic healing magic during their first year, so this was not a difficult task – but Harry found that he couldn't do the spell properly either. McGonagall kept bleeding, though more slowly as the cut started to clot on its own, and the three of them looked at each other in confusion.

"Don't tell me we can't do magic here for some reason," Snape said.

"Jareth didn't mention anything about that," replied McGonagall, muffled by the lace-trimmed handkerchief she'd removed from an inner pocket and pressed to her mouth. "But then, he wouldn't, would he?"

"What do you mean, we can't do magic?" It was Draco, who had walked up to them while they were distracted. His face and hands were scratched, but he looked all right otherwise. Neville and Hannah, slower to recover, joined the group a moment later, Neville limping slightly on a twisted ankle.

"Let's not jump to any conclusions," McGonagall said. She tucked the stained handkerchief back into her robes and prodded at her rapidly puffing lip one last time before turning her attention fully to the situation at hand. "Maybe it's only that particular type of spell that won't work. Try something else, Severus. Something simple."

Snape, who still had his wand out, shrugged and raised it. "Lumos," he said. The tip of his wand obediently lit up. Then a huge burst of greenish flame exploded from it, and everyone cried out in panic and dove to the ground. Fortunately for them, the fire died out as quickly as it had started, though it left a trail of scorch marks and smoldering grass behind.

This time McGonagall was the first one to sit up. "I'll assume you didn't intend to do that," she said to Snape, and he shook his head, looking both angry and horrified. His wand lay on the ground beside him – he'd dropped it to save his robe sleeve being incinerated – with a wisp of smoke still trailing from its end.

"Right," McGonagall said crisply. "I think perhaps we'd best avoid doing any sort of magic if we can help it, at least until we figure out what about this place is affecting us. Do we all agree?"

Everyone did.

"Then let's get moving," she said.

As he slithered down the slippery face of the hill, Harry found that he was suddenly as aware of his wand in his pocket as if it were a loaded pistol that might go off on its own at any minute. He almost wished he could ask McGonagall, or even Snape, to carry it for him, but squelched the idea in embarrassment. It was _his_ wand, after all, and if he couldn't control it, no one could.

To take his mind off thoughts of exploding wands, he asked Professor McGonagall the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since this strange experience had begun: "Professor, who was that man, Jareth? I mean, I heard Minister Fudge call him king of the goblins, but I didn't even know the goblins had a king."

"Neither did I," panted Neville behind them. "I thought the Goblin Rebellion was all about them getting rid of their king."

"It was," McGonagall said, "but – where have you gotten to in History of Magic?"

"Early eighteenth century," Hannah put in.

"Ah, that explains it." Harry heard a change in McGonagall's voice and realized she'd automatically clicked into lecturing mode. "After the rebellion, the goblins lived without a king for quite a while, but they didn't bother to form any other sort of government, and their society started to fall into chaos. Jump in any time, Severus," she called to Snape. "It's been a long time since I forced myself to stay awake through one of Professor Binns' classes."

Harry grinned at the image of a young McGonagall dozing off at her desk while Binns droned on and on. It seemed some things never changed.

"You're doing quite well without me, Minerva," said Snape.

She went on. "Then, about a hundred and fifty years ago, a wizard called Khamsin stepped up and offered to help them rebuild as their ruler. He wasn't a bad sort at all, and he ruled very effectively for several decades. But then another wizard – not such a benevolent one – came along and decided he wanted a crack at being a king. He killed Khamsin and seized power for himself."

"And that was Jareth?" asked Harry.

"That was Jareth," McGonagall confirmed. "He was much more powerful than Khamsin had been, but not nearly so good at handling his kingdom. The royal coffers were chronically empty, so he farmed out some of the cleverer goblins to work, mostly at Gringotts. With the money they bring in, he's kept things limping along, but only just. You see what comes of poor management."

"Spoken like a true administrator," Snape snorted. Draco laughed, and Harry, Neville and Hannah glared at both of them. But McGonagall seemed serenely unconcerned.

"Perhaps sometime we'll switch jobs for a week," she said. "You'll be raving mad within two days, and I'll be using your cauldrons to do my washing. Ah, here we are."

They'd scrambled down the last few feet of the hill while this exchange was going on, and now they crossed a flat bit of ground and stopped. Just ahead loomed the entrance to the Goblin King's labyrinth.


	3. Into The Labyrinth

**Disclaimer**: All characters and places belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever owns the rights to "Labyrinth."

**Spoilers**: All four books 

**Chapter** **3**: Into The Labyrinth

As the party of professors and students hesitated outside the labyrinth's entrance, Headmaster Dumbledore watched them in his own, larger version of one of Jareth's crystal globes. Fudge stood looking over Dumbledore's shoulder and annoying him no end by breathing on his neck. Near the fireplace, Jareth lounged in Dumbledore's armchair, wearing a bored expression and trying to coax Fawkes the phoenix to let himself be petted. Fawkes, who was clearly having none of Jareth, made an irritated "rraawwwk" noise and fluttered over to sit at Dumbledore's feet.

"What are they doing? Why are they stopping?" asked Fudge anxiously, all but wringing his hands together.

"I expect they're making sure it's safe before they go in," said Dumbledore. His eyes remained fixed on the scene in the crystal. "Minerva and Severus both have experience with exploring potentially dangerous places. Jareth really chose his emissaries well, considering."

"Of course I did." Jareth leaned suddenly between the other two men. Fudge jumped, but Dumbledore sat as unruffled as if he'd seen Jareth coming. "It's not safe, though, whatever they may think," the Goblin King went on. "I told you, the labyrinth has a mind of its own. Things are not always what they seem there."

"Indeed," Dumbledore said mildly. "You seem rather frightened of the labyrinth, Jareth. I find that odd. The last I knew, you were popping all over it as if you owned the place, ordering the goblins about and luring young girls inside. What's changed?"

Jareth scowled. "If you must know, the labyrinth has been behaving very strangely for a few years, even before it decided to hide my castle. It used to obey my every whim, but now it treats me as if I'm no more than a common visitor. My power is no less than it ever was – it's the labyrinth's power that's grown over time. Truthfully, I have no idea how it will react to your professors and students. It may let them go straight to the center, or it may swallow them up forever."

"We'll see about that," Dumbledore said. He gave Jareth an unfriendly look and then went back to his viewing.

***********************************************************

Snape touched the mossy, oozing stone of the outer labyrinth wall and rubbed his fingers together experimentally.

"Nasty stuff," he said.

"It's _collisporum antiformidae_," Neville said softly. "It's not dangerous." He had barely spoken until now. Harry was rather worried about him – Neville tended to be nervous at the best of times, and being flung into a strange place with his worst enemy as a fellow traveler was a bad situation for him. But Neville also occasionally suffered flashes of Gryffindor bravery, and offering information in front of Snape had been one of them.

"I don't recall asking for your expertise, Longbottom," Snape said coldly. It made Harry long to kick him.

"Yeah, Longbottom," Draco chimed in.

"I don't need a Greek chorus backing me up either, Malfoy." Draco subsided, looking hurt that his attempt to suck up had failed.

_I wish Ron and Hermione were here_, Harry thought. Though he liked Neville a lot, he felt as if he needed to protect him, and that was a heavy burden to carry. He barely knew Hannah, even after five years of double Herbology classes with her. Draco was a constant thorn in his side. And Snape – he didn't even want to think about his relationship with Snape. In short, when choosing this random group, the Goblin King had left Harry with no one he could count on for support.

"You can come on in," floated Professor McGonagall's voice over the wall. "There's nothing here."

Well, perhaps "no one" was a little extreme. McGonagall was not someone he was close to – as far as he knew, no student had ever gotten really close to her, not even Hermione – but she was trustworthy. And she wasn't likely to let Snape abuse any of them. Feeling a bit better, Harry stepped through the opening and into the labyrinth.

It wasn't as impressive up close as it had been from far away. All he could see were miles and miles of the same wet, faintly sparkling stone that made up the outer walls, and some soggy dead leaves and fallen branches on the ground. A thick mist hung in the air, and from this, Professor McGonagall emerged, her cloak damp and strands of her still-undone hair stuck to her face with condensation. He really wished that she would tie her hair up in her usual style now that they were away from Jareth. It made her look out of control, hanging all over the place like that, and he desperately wanted to feel that she was in command of the situation.

She returned his gaze with raised eyebrows. "Is there something wrong, Potter?"

"No, Professor," he said. Let someone else offer the fashion advice. It certainly wasn't going to be him.

The rest of the group filed in behind him and looked around, clearly as unexcited by their first view of the labyrinth as he had been. In addition to being overly moist, the air was also chilly, and Hannah and Draco, who hadn't been wearing cloaks when they were whisked away, started to shiver.

"Now what?" Draco asked through chattering teeth.

"Now we start looking for the castle so we can get out of here and get back to our proper work," said Snape. He had come to stand next to McGonagall, and as he spoke, he reached over absentmindedly and tucked some of the wayward bits of hair behind her ear. All four students gaped at this strangely intimate gesture, but neither teacher seemed to notice.

"Yes, but where do we start?" Hannah sounded plaintive. "We can't use magic, and we don't have any Muggle things like maps or compasses. Even if we did, who knows if they'd work here? I don't want to just wander around. We'll never get anywhere if we do that."

"Need some help, do you?"

Everyone turned to stare at the source of this new voice.

It was a goblin.


	4. The Reluctant Rescuer

Disclaimer: All characters and settings belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever owns the rights to "Labyrinth."

Spoilers: All four books

Chapter 4: The Reluctant Rescuer

As one, all four students clustered together behind Snape and McGonagall. The goblins Harry had met at Gringotts had always been helpful enough, if rather brusque and irritable, but he'd never forgotten Hagrid's warnings about them during his first trip to Diagon Alley. If even Hagrid thought goblins were creatures to beware of, then Harry was taking no chances.

This goblin was reminiscent of the Gringotts goblins in that it was short and ugly. However, it seemed much hairier than other goblins, and it was larger – perhaps four feet high. Neither feature was appealing.

"Well?" it demanded of them. "What are you up to? Spit it out! I'm very busy, you know."

Snape and McGonagall looked at each other and seemed to reach an unspoken agreement. McGonagall stepped forward, trying to meet the goblin's eyes directly without calling undue attention to the fact that she towered over it, while Snape stood poised to react if it did something sudden.

"We're looking for a castle," she said. "Do you happen to know the way there?"

"What business is the castle of yours?" asked the goblin suspiciously, scratching its head.

"We've been sent to find it," McGonagall said. Harry could see her hand balled into a fist near her pocket as she fought the urge to clutch her wand. He realized that Snape and McGonagall, and probably Hannah and Draco too, were at a greater disadvantage in this situation than someone like him, who had spent most of his life without magic, or Neville, whose magic hardly ever worked properly anyway. They were used to relying on magic for everything from everyday tasks to self-defense, and they felt vulnerable without it.

"Sent by who?" the goblin wanted to know.

"By Jareth," said McGonagall.

The goblin spat on the ground in disgust. "Pah – Jareth! I ain't helping anyone who's helping him. It serves him right that he's lost his castle. He never took proper care of it, or any of us for that matter. We was all happy as could be when the labyrinth hid it. None of us went there anyway, if we had anything to say about it. We don't miss the nasty place."

"Do you mean to say it's hidden from the creatures that live here as well?" asked Snape.

"That's right, and good riddance," said the goblin. "Smart move on the labyrinth's part, that. If we don't know where the castle is, Jareth can't make us tell. He would have done that straight away if he could have. 'Course, you're welcome to look for it on your own. If I come across your bones a few years from now, I'll be sure to bury them proper. Well, I'm off." It turned and started to stump away.

"Wait!" called McGonagall after it. "Isn't there anything you can do to help us? Perhaps take us to the place where the castle used to be? We could start from there …"

"It don't matter where you _start_ from," said the goblin, looking back at them over its shoulder. "If the labyrinth don't want you to find it, you won't find it. And the labyrinth don't want anyone to find it. So you might as well go on home and tell Jareth he's out of luck."

"Jareth seemed to think we had a chance at succeeding," Snape said.

The goblin laughed – a harsh, rumbling laugh, like rocks falling in a quarry.

"I wouldn't give two Knuts for Jareth's opinion!" it said. "A few years back he had a girl here looking for her baby brother. He thought he'd make her his personal plaything and keep the baby into the bargain. Ha! She had him beat in no time. Goes to show you what a good judge he is of people's abilities." And with that, it trundled off around a corner, still chuckling, and vanished.

Everyone stared in the direction it had gone. Finally, Draco said "Well, _he_ was useless."

"Thank you for that enlightening comment, Mr. Malfoy," said McGonagall. Her glasses had fogged up from the swirling mist, and as she spoke, she took them off and cleaned them on her sleeve. The minute she put them back on, they fogged again, and she made an exasperated sound that strongly resembled the deep-throated growl of a cat. "If anyone has any actual suggestions as to what we should do, I'd love to hear them."

This startled Harry enormously. He was used to asking the professors for advice, not the other way round. 

_They really don't know what to do without their magic,_ he thought, and his level of worry shot up another notch.

"Couldn't we try another spell?" Neville asked timidly. "There has to be one that wouldn't set us all on fire."

"Yes, a locator spell," said Draco. He turned to Snape. "That would be all right, wouldn't it, sir?"

"I doubt that it would physically harm us," Snape said, "but I doubt it would point us in the right direction either. It could be like a will o' the wisp, leading us straight to our deaths." He said this last part coolly, but his face was grim.

Hannah sat down suddenly on a rotten tree stump, ignoring the slime and bark fragments it left on the seat of her robes.

"Then we're stuck," she said in a trembling voice. "We can't go forward, and we can't go back. We're never going to get out of here." And she burst into tears.

At the sight of this, all three boys and Snape looked away with assorted expressions of embarrassment and disgust. Only McGonagall attempted to be comforting. Unfortunately, her idea of comforting involved a great deal of briskness and not much sympathy.

"Pull yourself together, Miss Abbott," she said, as if Hannah were making a terrible spectacle of herself. "We've been at this for less than an hour. It's a bit soon to start declaring our doom." She patted the weeping girl perfunctorily on the back. "Come, now, that's enough. We're all right for the moment." Gasping and sobbing, Hannah tried valiantly to obey the instruction, but enjoyed only limited success.

"Aren't all you Hufflepuffs supposed to be good little worker bees who never give up?" Draco asked her in mocking tones.

"That doesn't mean we're not _realistic_," sniffled Hannah into her hands.

McGonagall shot a glance at Snape over Hannah's hunched shoulders. "Well, Severus?" she asked. "What do you think?"

"I say we get that thing back here," said Snape, who was still looking in the direction the goblin had gone. "It knew more than it was letting on."

"How will you make it talk?" asked Draco.

"Watch," said Snape.

Harry – and from the look of her, McGonagall too – had an unpleasant vision of Snape using torture tactics he'd learned during his tenure with the Death Eaters to force the goblin to help them. Snape, however, appeared to have something else in mind. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed "YOU! CREATURE! WE'RE READY TO DEAL!"

"Severus, he's probably long gone by now," McGonagall objected. "It's been –" But before she could finish saying whatever she intended to say, the goblin poked its lumpish head round the corner again. It couldn't have gone any farther than the next pathway, Harry thought. How had Snape known?

"Deal, eh?" it asked.

"Yes," said Snape. "Tell us what your help will cost us, and we'll find a way to pay you, either now or when we're finished here. I know you have a price. Everyone does."

The goblin got a strangely coy expression on its face and scuffled a foot in the dirt. "Well, I really shouldn't – it wouldn't be right –"

"I don't care about your moral quandary," Snape snapped impatiently. "Just tell me what you want."

"I could only take you to where the castle was, mind," said the goblin. "And you aren't to tell anyone else in the labyrinth I helped you even that much. I wouldn't take you there at all if I thought it would actually do you any good, which I don't. But – I'd do it for jewels."

Snape snorted. "Jewels? Do we look as if we're carting diamonds and rubies around in our pockets?"

"Not gems," said the goblin, "though I wouldn't say no to those if you had them. No, I mean decorations – rings, necklaces, that sort of thing. _She's_ got some," pointing to the still-tearful Hannah, who put a protective hand over the bracelet dangling from her wrist.

"I got it for my birthday!" she protested. "It was my grandmother's …" She saw how everyone else was looking at her and caved in. "Oh, all right, take it." The goblin snatched it from her outstretched hand and caressed it lovingly.

"Very nice!" it said. "But I'll need more than this. You should have seen the bother it caused last time I helped someone. She said she'd be my friend forever, and does she ever come around anymore? No! So now I sticks to movable goods. Real property. Safer that way."

With that, the goblin cleared its throat pointedly, staring at the brooch on McGonagall's collar. She unpinned it, then reached up around her neck, undid a catch and pulled a silver chain and knot pendant out of the bodice of her dress. Both went into the goblin's gnarled palm, as did a heavy gold ring that Snape had removed from his right ring finger.

"Anyone else?" Snape asked, looking at Neville, Draco and Harry. After a minute, Draco grudgingly handed over his watch. Neville and Harry both shook their heads to show they didn't have anything.

"All right," said McGonagall to the goblin, "if you're quite through committing highway robbery, let's go. I don't fancy the thought of spending the night here."

"Don't care for our little paradise, eh?" The goblin grinned. "Well, neither does anyone who lives in it. I'm sure you sleep on feather beds with silk sheets at home. Wouldn't I like to join you!"

McGonagall grimaced, probably at the thought of waking up and seeing the goblin's warty visage on the pillow next to her. "Never mind that. Just take us as far as you can."

As they started walking, the goblin saw Harry regarding it curiously and growled "What are _you_ staring at?"

"Er, nothing," said Harry, embarrassed at having been caught looking. "I've just never seen a goblin that looks quite like you, is all."

"Goblin!" said the creature indignantly. "I ain't a goblin! I'm a dwarf."

"Is there a difference?" asked Draco from behind them. "You're height- challenged, you look like something the cat dragged in …"

"Mr. Malfoy!" McGonagall rapped out. "That's very rude. Ten points from Slytherin when we get back."

The goblin – no, the _dwarf_ -- didn't seem impressed by this attempt at discipline.

"You're no beauty either, by my standards," it said to Draco. "Pale as a fish's belly! I'd take a gander in the mirror before I started insulting other people's looks, if I were you."

"What's your name?" Harry cut in, hoping to stop this argument before it went any further – though he had to admit he was enjoying seeing someone else snarking at Draco for a change.

"My name?" the dwarf said. "It's Hoggle. And I don't want to hear any jokes about it."

To be continued …

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P.S. Thanks very much to everyone who originally reviewed this story! Watch for the next chapter – it won't be much longer now till it's ready.


	5. Long Day's Journey Into Night

**Disclaimer: **The characters depicted here belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever owns the rights to "Labyrinth." The title of this chapter is from the play by Eugene O'Neill.

**Chapter 5**: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Harry quickly lost track of how long they'd been walking. Hoggle now had Draco's watch, which had been the only one in the group, tucked into a leather drawstring pouch that hung from his belt and thumped against his leg with each step. No one wanted to ask him to take it out and check the time, but it seemed they'd been plodding along forever, passing everything from broken stone walls to dead animals to thorn thickets to overgrown ornamental topiary as they went.

Marking the passage of hours by the sun was no good either. The cold mist that had plagued them near the labyrinth's entrance had long since melted away to reveal a strange, muted light that came from everywhere and nowhere. Unfortunately, this lack of a visible sun didn't stop them from feeling the heat – they'd all taken off their cloaks, and, in the case of the professors, their over-robes – or from getting sunburnt. Draco and Hannah, who had the fairest skin, already sported painful stripes across their noses and cheeks, and Neville and McGonagall were starting to look decidedly pink. Only Snape's sallow complexion seemed burn-proof.

In addition to these discomforts, everyone was hungry. Harry thought of his classmates sitting down to lunch in the Great Hall, where hot entrees sizzled next to bowls of exotic fruit and platters heaped with ten different kinds of sandwiches, and nearly groaned aloud.

"I'm starving," Hannah whispered to him as they followed a path around an intricate curve that doubled back on itself three times before heading off (or so they hoped) in another direction. 

"Me too," he whispered back. Then he blushed as his stomach punctuated the statement with a deep rumbling noise. 

Hannah giggled. "Think Snape and McGonagall have any plans to stop anytime soon?" she asked.

He looked ahead at the two professors, who were trudging just behind the seemingly indefatigable dwarf. They both looked tired and rather annoyed, but determined. 

"Nope," he said. 

"That's what I thought," said Hannah.

They kept walking.

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No one in the group of explorers would have been pleased if they had seen the feasting that was going on in Dumbledore's office. The Headmaster had ordered a meal from the kitchens, and the house-elves had outdone themselves, sending up more food than any three people could possibly have consumed. 

Dumbledore and Fudge sat with full plates balanced on their knees, eating roast beef and mashed potatoes while they watched events unfold in the crystal. Jareth had refused any food, but lurked near them with a golden goblet of wine in his hand.

"The wretched dwarf is taking them the long way," he grumped. "Leave it to him to deliver the least service for the largest reward. I shall take it out of his hide when I get back."

"At least he's helping them," offered Fudge through a mouthful of honey-glazed baby carrots.

"Barely," said Jareth, and went to look out the window as Fudge gazed after him, worried and perplexed.

"I don't understand him at all," he said to Dumbledore in an undertone. 

"Jareth has that effect on people, at first" Dumbledore replied in kind, dabbing at his beard tidily with a white linen napkin. "Even when he was a small boy here, his behavior was erratic, to say the least. But it was never truly random. He always had reasons for the things he did. They may have seemed like mad reasons, but if you sat and listened to him explain them, it was nearly impossible not to be seduced into seeing things his way – at least as long as you were in his company."

"He attended Hogwarts? I didn't know. When did he graduate?"

"He didn't," said Dumbledore. "He left at the end of his fifth year. That was – let me see – perhaps a few years before the start of the first Muggle world war. He didn't care for the regimentation of life here, or the discipline. Always one to do things his own way, was Jareth."

"And when did he go over to the Dark?"

"He didn't," Dumbledore said again. "The Dark side, the Light side, those have no meaning to him. Nothing matters except his own ambitions and desires. He is more Slytherin than Salazar himself. I've never heard the Sorting Hat shout someone's House assignment more emphatically than it did his."

Fudge turned and looked at Jareth again.

"It seems strange for someone like that to be asking for help," he said.

"Not really," said Dumbledore. "He would turn the world upside down to achieve his goals; asking for our assistance is a small thing in comparison. But I suspect there's more to his request than either you or I have been told. Whatever it is, I intend to find out as quickly as possible so we can resolve this situation. We have problems more pressing than Jareth and his castle, don't we, Cornelius?" He said this last part with a meaningful look at Fudge, as if reminding him of their previous difference in opinion regarding Voldemort's return – a difference that had been resolved in Dumbledore's favor by the events of recent months.

"Er, yes. Indeed," said Fudge, shifting uncomfortably under the Headmaster's stern gaze. Dumbledore watched him squirm – it would do Fudge good to feel like an errant student again, he thought – and then let him off the hook.

"Apple tart?" he asked.

"Yes, thanks." Fudge took the blue-flowered serving dish Dumbledore offered him and began digging out a large helping of the pastry, relieved to have something else to focus on for a moment.

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"Hurry up back there!" Hoggle shouted to his group of footsore followers. It was amazing how fast those stubby legs could walk, thought Harry, as he clambered over a fallen statue of a woman with two heads – each head with a face more beautiful and terrifying than the other – that had almost completely blocked the pathway. 

"We're going as fast as we can," huffed Snape. "It isn't a race, you know."

"Oh, yes, it is," the dwarf shot back. "If we don't get to the place where the castle was before the labyrinth takes a mind to shift itself, who knows when we'll find it?"

"What do you mean, shift itself?" asked McGonagall. She was even more winded than Snape, but kept forging ahead out of sheer stubbornness.

"Exactly what I said. It likes to move about. Especially around evening." Hoggle waved a large-knuckled hand at the sky, which was indeed darkening from diffuse sunshine to a bruised purple twilight.

"Isn't it too early to be getting dark?" asked Draco. "We left school at eleven this morning. We can't have been here for that many hours already."

"Night comes when it comes," Hoggle intoned. 

"Great. A dwarf who talks like a fortune cookie," muttered Draco, low enough that only Harry, Hannah and Neville could hear him – or so he thought.

"Less talking, more walking, fish-boy," the dwarf grunted without turning around. Draco made a very rude gesture at Hoggle's back, but he shut up.

After at least half an eternity longer, they rounded a hairpin turn and came upon a curious sight: a wide, tree-ringed open area sitting smack in the middle of the walled passages. There was no sign that anything else had ever been there. The ground was perfectly flat, the grass not even slightly crushed. But Hoggle said "Here you are, then. Former location of the Castle Beyond the Goblin City. Enjoy your stay. I'll be going now."

"What, just like that?" demanded McGonagall. "You've brought us all this way; aren't you even going to show us around?"

"Around what?" Hoggle wanted to know. He stretched out his arms, indicating the entire parklike expanse. "This is it. And I suggest you do whatever you're going to do in it before it goes away."

As if on cue, a massive shudder shook the ground, and Neville suddenly yelled something incoherent and pointed across the clearing at the walls of the labyrinth. They were reconfiguring, rolling as if on invisible wheels – and moving at breakneck speed toward the group of travelers.

To be continued …

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Author's Notes

Anakah: Thanks for being my first reviewer! Mainly, I chose not to send Hermione and Ron on the quest because I wanted to see how Harry would interact with different people. But H and R will appear in the story later on. And as for Sarah … well, you never know. Anything's possible in the Labyrinth.

Anya Levvy: I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! I like stories that have a lot of different elements – a little humor, a little drama, a little romance and so on – so that's what I try to write. Kind of like a fiction smorgasbord. =)

Demonchilde: Hope you liked Chapter 5. =)

Orion: Romance? Hmmmm … we'll see!

Grania: More coming right up!

Aryn Synester: Your wish is my command. =) I promise faster updates this time than when the story was posted under my other name.

Thanks so much to all of you for reviewing. Feel free to ask questions if anything gets confusing as we go along, and I will do my best to answer.


	6. When It Rains ...

**Disclaimer**: The characters depicted here belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever owns the rights to "Labyrinth."

**Chapter 6**: When It Rains …

In his five years at Hogwarts, Harry had seen so many staircases, oil paintings, chess pieces and other supposedly inanimate objects moving under their own power that he'd thought nothing of that sort could surprise him anymore. But he'd never seen _anything_ move as quickly, or as unpredictably, as the walls of the labyrinth did as they slid around and into each other. It was like watching a square dance performed at triple speed by mad people. 

As the chaos drew closer, he, Hannah, Neville and Draco all had the same impulse at the same time, and that impulse was: RUN. They promptly obeyed it.

"Stop it, you idiots!" Snape shouted when they scattered. "Don't run off half-cocked! Wait till you see where the walls are going; _then_ move!" With that, he took his own advice and dove to his left. Half an instant later, a wall barreled through the spot he'd been standing in and violently uprooted a nearby tree, sending a shower of moist dirt pattering down on everything within a fifty-foot radius.

All four students froze in their respective positions, eyes darting from one careening heap of stone to the next. In his peripheral vision, Harry saw Draco grab Neville by the back of his robes and jerk him aside just before two converging walls would have crushed him between them. 

_There's something I never thought I'd live to see_, he thought, and then _I hope it's not the LAST thing I live to see._

"Right, Miss Abbott!" called McGonagall, who'd just nimbly dodged out of harm's way herself. "Go r—" A wall slid in front of her and cut off the last word, but Hannah had taken the point the first time, and was already scrambling to her right. That left Harry alone. He stood sweating and tense, trying to gauge the speed of the remaining few walls that hadn't already reached stopping places. were three of them, all headed toward his little patch of open ground from different directions. 

_Left? No. Right? Can't do that either. Oh no, oh no, oh –_

All at once he saw it, saw the path that each wall was going to take and realized that running was not the answer. Standing still was. Unfortunately, doing that was nearly impossible – and it didn't help that Hannah and Neville were both screaming "Move, Harry, move!" as if they thought he'd lost his mind. Even Draco looked worried, but after a second his expression shifted to one of understanding, and Harry knew the other boy had figured it out too. Having independent confirmation of his calculations wasn't enough to keep him from closing his eyes as apparent destruction thundered down on his head, though. He felt a breeze blow his hair, heard and felt a rapid-fire series of crashes on all sides. Then he opened his eyes again to find himself standing untouched in a square alcove formed by the angles of the three walls.

The labyrinth had stopped. To Harry, though, it felt as if everything was still moving, making him want to grab the nearest wall for support, and possibly throw up while he was at it. 

He could hear people yelling his name and running everywhere, but it was McGonagall who got to him first. She came around the open end of the alcove looking even whiter and shakier than she had when they'd met after the dragon part of the Triwizard Tournament, clearly expecting to find him horribly mangled underneath a ton of stone. When she saw he was all right, he thought for one dreadful moment that she was going to burst into tears. But she rallied, got hold of herself and said "Glad to see you're in one piece, Potter."

"Me too," he said. His voice quivered a tiny bit, and he groaned inwardly. The last thing he wanted to do was go all squishy and emotional. He hadn't gotten hurt. He was fine. No big deal.

At that point, Snape burst into Harry's alcove, followed closely by Draco, Hannah and Neville.

"I _told_ you," Draco said to Hannah and Neville, as if he were speaking to a pair of very young, very stupid children. "Anyone could have seen he would be all right if he just stood still."

"I couldn't," said Neville, looking at Harry with wide, concerned eyes. "Harry, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," said Harry. "Really."

"Yes, yes, we all know you live a charmed life, Potter," said Snape. He sounded as sneering and impatient as ever, but to Harry's wonder, there was as much relief on his sallow face as there was on McGonagall's pale one. 

"Is everyone else all right as well?" asked McGonagall.

"So it seems," Snape said, "but we've lost the dwarf. He was separated from us while everything was moving around, and apparently took the opportunity to run away. Little wretch. No doubt he's back in whatever hole he lives in by now, sitting in front of the fire with his feet up."

Draco glanced up at the sky, which was growing darker by the minute.

"Can _we_ make a fire?" he asked. "It's getting cold again."

"I suppose we might as well stop in this area for the night," said McGonagall to Snape. "We won't find anything barging around in the dark, and the walls have nowhere left to move."

"Yes, let's stop, _please_," put in Hannah. "I can't walk another step."

They all agreed with that. Since the alcove was rather tight, they went back to the point where they had entered the field (when it had been a field) and found a sheltered spot underneath a tree, near a long stretch of wall. That only left the problem of making a fire. No one really wanted to try a spell, but when McGonagall eventually braved it, holding her wand out gingerly at arm's length, nothing happened.

"There's 'lumos,'" Harry suggested. "That made fire before." This time, though, "lumos" brought not fire, but a shower of green sparks that fizzed in the air and disappeared before they reached the ground.

Suddenly, Neville said "Oh!" as if remembering something, and came out from behind the bushes where he'd taken cover during the spell-casting, holding out a small, rectangular silver object. It was a cigarette lighter. 

Snape took it and looked at it suspiciously. "Don't worry," said Neville, "it's a Muggle one. No enchantments. I got it because I nearly burnt my eyebrows off a few times trying to light up with my wand." 

"Since when do you smoke, Longbottom?" Draco wanted to know.

"Since last summer," Neville said. "Lavender and Parvati told me it would help me lose weight."

"Did it?" asked Hannah.

"No," Neville said, with a despondent glance down at his chunky body in its ill-fitting grey uniform.

Snape snapped the lighter open and regarded the small, steady flame. "I suppose I should lecture you on the evils of smoking, Longbottom, but at the moment I'm just glad you have the thing," he said.

"But the moment we get back to school, you'll report to Madam Pomfrey for a nicotine-aversion spell," McGonagall put in. "I refuse to send you home to your grandmother with a Hogwarts diploma and a case of incipient lung cancer." 

"It's OK. I can stop anytime I want," Neville said, blushing.

"Have you tried yet?" asked McGonagall.

"No …"

"Go to Madam Pomfrey," she said. "Trust me, it will be easier."

"Before we move on from this fascinating topic, do the rest of you lot have anything useful in your grubby little pockets?" Snape asked Draco, Hannah and Harry. They all shrugged, and the Potions Master sighed and said "All right, turn them out. You too, Longbottom."

Everyone did as he said, laying their possessions on the ground to be examined by the glow of Neville's lighter. Draco had a pack of Exploding Snap cards, a stick of gum and three gold Galleons. Neville had, in addition to the lighter, his Remembrall, a half-empty tube of toad skin conditioner, a Chocolate Frog and a handful of Knuts. Harry had a Dungbomb he'd gotten from Fred Weasley, a piece of string and the key to his trunk. Hannah had nothing except her wand and the crystal Jareth had given her, which all the rest of them had as well.

"Your turn, Minerva," said Snape, and McGonagall added a notepad, a quill, a dragon-hide coin purse and one of her lace-trimmed handkerchiefs to the small pile. When she pulled out the handkerchief, a clear vial of some shimmering pinkish liquid came along with it.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"Nothing that would apply to this situation," McGonagall said shortly, stuffing the vial back into her pocket and not meeting Harry's eyes. He wondered why she should look so embarrassed about a potion, but concluded that it really didn't matter. At this point, he wasn't too interested in anything he couldn't eat.

Finally, Snape emptied his own pockets, which contained a nasty assortment of potion-making odds and ends and a half-full tin of breath mints. Something about this last item struck Harry as very funny – so funny that he had to put his hand over his mouth to hide a snicker. It just seemed silly for a person as greasy and generally unhygienic-looking as Snape to be concerned about his breath. It wasn't as if he were going to be kissing anyone.

As it turned out, Harry shouldn't have laughed at the breath mints, because once they'd gotten a fire going (using the lighter, some sticks and a technique Harry had seen Dudley practicing during his short fling with the Boy Scouts) he found himself eating them for dinner, along with a scrupulously measured one-sixth of Neville's Chocolate Frog. 

He looked around at his companions, all of whom were sucking morosely on their mints and not talking much. They definitely looked the worse for wear, scratched, bruised, sunburned and covered with dirt.

_The Goblin King had better have some kind of amazing reward in store for us when we find his stupid castle_, he thought. 

But he suspected their only reward was going to be surviving.

**Next chapter**: Harry stumbles onto a secret, the explorers experience an unpleasant awakening, and Dumbledore decides to get to the bottom of things.

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**Author's Notes: **

Lassy D, demonchilde, arcee, MK, Kitty and Grania-don't call me Grace: Thanks! I hope you all are still enjoying it.

Ozma: Oh, you've got to see "Labyrinth" – it's such a fun film, and your kids will like it. (Though it might be a little scary for them if they're really young.)

Hoggle wasn't really flirting with Minerva – he just wanted to embarrass her. He'd be a lot more excited by the thought of getting to sleep in a luxurious bed than of sharing it with anyone!

Jareth is an interesting character. As one of the other reviewers said, he's cruel and wicked, but not evil the way Voldemort is evil. Sometimes it can be difficult to see the distinction between those things. I think there is one, though.

Miriam: No real food for them yet, the poor things. I had to bring the hunger issue up because it always amuses me that it never seems to be a problem in quest/odyssey stories. I'm useless if my lunch comes an hour late, but the heroes of stories just seem to march on endlessly without thinking of food. 

We'll soon see more of what's lurking in the maze!

And Jareth's castle connected to Voldemort? Interesting idea …

Aryn Synester: I love Snape and Jareth too! They're so good when they're bad. =)


	7. ... It Pours

**Disclaimer**: The usual

**Author's Note**: I apologize for the delay in reposting this chapter! It turned out not to be so very different, but I did have reasons for changing it. If you read the original version, the Snape/McGonagall bit still applies. It just isn't being shown at this time.

Again, my apologies. Stay with me …

**Chapter 7**: …It Pours

The crystal on the Headmaster's desk rested tranquilly in its cherrywood stand, dim except for a yellow-orange flicker of fire. If you looked very closely, you could see the faint outlines of six sleeping bodies ranged around that flicker. 

Dumbledore wasn't looking, but he was still there, awake and alone in the small hours of the morning, thinking about the situation. None of his thoughts were encouraging. Until this point, the group's efforts had been ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. With the labyrinth shifting position and magic working unreliably, if at all, it seemed the only way they would ever accomplish their mission was by accident.

_When in doubt, review what you know_, Dumbledore thought, and proceeded to do just that. 

He knew that the labyrinth had hidden the castle quite recently. But Jareth had said that it had been behaving oddly for several years. And in that case – in that case, the missing castle might be no more than part of some larger phenomenon that had been going on all this time. Locating it would only be a temporary solution. They would be all better off directing their time and energy toward finding out _why_ the labyrinth had hidden the castle, and how it had been able to, than finding the castle itself. 

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. 

He pushed back his chair and got up. First he would see his staff and students home safely. Then he would extract some better answers from Jareth. The house-elves had put the Goblin King up in the best visitors' quarters, where he was no doubt fast asleep by now. Dumbledore had no compunctions about waking him, though. In fact, he thought he might enjoy it.

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_Drip. Drip._

Something cold and wet splashed against the back of Harry's neck, right onto the spot between where his hair ended and the collar of his robes began. He swiped at it and rolled over, determined to keep sleeping at all costs.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

More splashes, this time on his cheek. Now through his grogginess, he heard a soft, rustling patter that could only be one thing: the sound of rain on leaves. And when he opened his eyes, sure enough, rain was falling relentlessly from a uniformly dove-grey sky that promised plenty more to come. Only the tree branches above were keeping him from getting completely soaked.

He sat up. The fire had died down to glowing red embers that hissed every time a raindrop struck them. On the opposite side of it were two cloak-wrapped bundles. One had Neville's mouse-brown hair sticking out at the top. The other, Harry knew, contained Draco, though not an inch of him was showing. 

A little way from Harry's bit of ground, just outside the protection of the tree, McGonagall lay with her head resting on one out-flung arm, oblivious to the puddle slowly forming around her. Wondering how she could possibly sleep under those conditions, Harry looked around for Snape and Hannah. They were nowhere to be seen. 

A strange, uneasy sensation started to steal over him. If it hadn't been raining, he would have assumed they'd gone off to explore or maybe look for something to eat, though it would make more sense for Snape to take Draco on such an expedition than Hannah. But it _was_ raining – and seemed to be raining harder by the minute – and he just couldn't imagine them strolling around in that. Could something have happened to them?

Out of the remaining group, he would have felt most comfortable waking Neville to ask his opinion, but Neville wasn't likely to be much help. So he braced himself, crawled over to his unconscious head-of-house instead, and poked her tentatively in the shoulder.

"Professor McGonagall – hey, Professor – wake up." 

"Mmmmph," she said in a cross, drowsy voice, swatting at him as if he were an annoying insect.

"Please …" He prodded her shoulder again. This time she opened her eyes.

"What? Is something happening?"

"I'm not sure," Harry said. "Professor Snape and Hannah are missing, and I don't know where they went."

Worry joined the sleep-dazed expression on McGonagall's face, and she sat up, squelching slightly in the surrounding mud and water.

"How long have they been gone?" she asked.

"I don't know. I woke up a few minutes ago and they weren't here. I don't think they would have just walked off in the rain without saying where they were going."

"No, nor do I," she said. Harry offered his hand to help her to her feet, but she waved it away and got up under her own power, if a little stiffly. She had dead leaves in her hair and mud all down the side she'd been lying on. 

"Have you tried contacting them with your crystal?" she asked, brushing at some of the mess before giving it up as a bad job. 

"Um, no," said Harry. He felt a little foolish. Why hadn't he thought of that?

"Well, let's try it now," McGonagall said, and fished her crystal out of her pocket. "Usually these are voice-activated." With that, she held up the crystal and said "Severus Snape!" in commanding tones

At first nothing happened. The globe rested in the palm of her hand, blank and clear except for the raindrops spattering it. Then it slowly darkened until it was completely black.

McGonagall stared at it with her forehead creased in a frown. "It's working, I think, but I don't see why – Try yours, Potter."

Harry did, and got the same result. "Maybe it's because they still have the crystals inside their pockets," he suggested. "There wouldn't be anything to see then."

"Maybe," said McGonagall, who was looking more and more troubled by the minute, "but crystals like these have vibrating alarms, very persistent ones, to let their owners know when someone is trying to contact them. No one could ignore that for long, unless they had no choice – if they were –" She didn't go on, but Harry suspected she'd been about to say _If they were trapped somewhere. _

They stood there looking at each other through the rain, all at once not teacher and student or adult and child, but just two people lost in a strange place and wondering what to do. After a moment, McGonagall snapped out of it and started doing what she did best, which was issuing instructions.

"All right, we'll have to go looking for them. I've no intention of leaving Longbottom and Malfoy here alone while we do, though. I'll wake them, and you try calling out loud for Professor Snape and Miss Abbott, just in case I'm wrong and their crystals are malfunctioning somehow. But _stay close_. One set of missing persons is quite enough."

Harry obeyed, alternately yelling "HANNAH!" and "PROFESSOR SNAPE!" while McGonagall hauled Neville and Draco out from under their cloaks and briefly explained the situation to them. Draco immediately joined in the calling, though Harry noticed he yelled for Snape at least three times more often than he did for Hannah. 

Once Neville was on his feet and moving – he was always slow to wake up – the four of them started walking, picking their way carefully across the slick paving stones and muddy grass areas of the path. They had verified that the crystals were, in fact, working properly by using them to call each other. Whatever was preventing Snape and Hannah from responding, it wasn't that. 

Before they'd gone very far, they came to a spot where two passages converged to make a four-way crossing, and had to stop to decide which way to go. While Draco insisted they go to the left and McGonagall told Draco he was not in charge of the expedition, Harry looked down the right-hand pathway, noting that it had a great many more trees in it than any other area they'd been in so far, growing so thickly and closely that the branches intertwined to make a sort of canopy overhead.

Suddenly, over the sound of Draco and McGonagall's arguing and the rustling of wind and rain in the leaves, he heard a much louder rustling that seemed to be coming from the tree-lined passage.

_That's weird_, he thought. He looked back at his companions. They weren't paying any attention to him, so he took a few steps to the right. 

_I won't go too far. I just want to see what it is._

At first, the sound seemed to be everywhere, but as he went a little farther down the passage, he could tell it was coming from two distinct points, one immediately to his left, the other slightly ahead and to his right. Looking at the tree on his left, he saw a section of low-hanging branches that were bunched oddly, twisted and curved as if they were trying to grow back into the trunk, and also, he realized, shaking slightly with some unseen force. 

This was the source of the rustling. He stepped closer, staring hard at the area. And then he saw, through the leaves and twigs: the bright, wet, dark spots of two terrified human eyes staring back.

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"This is an outrage! How dare you disturb my rest this way? I should –"

"You should sit down and relax," said Dumbledore. He gestured to a chair, and Jareth flung himself into it with a snarl. "Count your blessings. I might very well have refused to wait while you put something on." It seemed the Goblin King preferred to sleep _au naturel_, a fact Dumbledore had uncovered, as it were, by yanking away the blankets when Jareth had coldly refused to get out of bed. 

Not much could embarrass Dumbledore so late in his life, but he had to confess he'd been thrown off his stride a bit at that point. He'd kept his gaze carefully averted while Jareth threw on a dressing gown, and then shooed him through the halls without explaining where they were going or why. 

This was not his usual way of dealing with people, but someone like Jareth required special handling. And Dumbledore was good at that. Though only a few of his friends and colleagues knew it, he'd been offered the chance to go into Salazar's House, once upon a time, and had given it serious consideration before politely asking the Sorting Hat to place him in Gryffindor instead. He had not lost his streak of Slytherin craftiness in the intervening century and a half. If anything, it had grown stronger.

Now, with a fuming Slytherin wizard sitting on the other side of his desk, he felt that part of his nature rise to the surface and counsel him to be careful. Jareth's power was not as strong as his, but it was close, and the Goblin King was impulsive enough to use it in unexpected ways. With this in mind, he made his first move placating rather than inflammatory.

"I haven't brought you here to annoy you," he said. "I need your help, Jareth. Will you help me?"

Jareth glowered at him, arms folded across his chest

"It's not a question of me helping you, Albus. I've come here looking for your help."

"You and Cornelius have made that abundantly clear," said Dumbledore. "But I won't able to help you properly if you keep me in the dark. You haven't told me everything, have you?" Jareth didn't answer, and Dumbledore went on, "My staff, Jareth, my students – they're in danger. If they had the use of their magic, it might be different. But they don't, and I refuse to watch passively while their time is wasted and their very lives are put at risk."

Here he stopped and waited patiently. People who could sit in complete silence with someone else were very rare. Jareth would have to say something sooner or later.

He was quite impressed by how long Jareth held out. Eventually, however, the younger man broke and asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"Bring them home."

The Goblin King shook his head.

"I can't do that, Albus," he said.

"Certainly you can," said Dumbledore.

"No," said Jareth. "I can't. I haven't the power. And neither do you. The labyrinth has all the power. The labyrinth is in control."

_To be continued …_

**Next chapter**: Snape and Hannah are found. Jareth comes clean about the labyrinth. And Fudge gets the smackdown. (OK, I'm kidding about that last part. I only wish. Maybe I can find a way to write it in realistically.)


End file.
